Wednesday means it’s time for a new episode of American Horror Story! However, we had some time to kill before the show started. So, we flipped through the channels and landed on TLC. Right now, they’re airing episodes of a show called “Extreme Cheapskates.” It seemed interesting enough. In fact, I thought maybe I could get some tips for saving some dollars.
We first caught the end of an episode where a woman was planning her son’s tenth birthday party. She went to a bakery that, among other things, sold slices of cake. She found several that weren’t perfect and talked them down in price. She then asked if they could place them together and frost them to look like one whole cake. The guy said he would for $5 extra. She talked him down to $2.50. Done. She got a decorated birthday cake for $6. Okay, that seems reasonable. Maybe don’t tell the guests it’s pushed together scratch-n-dent slices. She then stopped at a couple of places that had mylar balloons for promotions (like to draw attention to a sale) to see if she could take them for decorations. She scored a pretty sizable bundle of large mylar balloons. Again, fine. Balloons that might have been tossed to save some bucks seems fair. The weirdest part was that the party was held at a nursing home. Nice for the old folks, but maybe a little odd for the ten year old and his friends. Still, this didn’t seem absurd. I could say scoring some free balloons and cheap cake. All right, some tips!
Then, on to an episode with an engaged couple planning their wedding. Only, they weren’t so much doing the planning. The bride-to-be’s mother was the one doing the planning. She made one of the bedrooms in the house the “wedding room” where she was stockpiling items for the wedding. Again, okay. I can see wanting to save some dollars. When we got married, we had a set budget, and if one thing went over its share we had to cut from another item. For example, we found a photographer we loved, and he was above the photography budget. So, we looked at what else we could save on so we could afford it. In this case, we cut the budget for the flowers. That meant we had to get creative with centerpieces to cut them out, and we re-used ceremony arrangements for the reception. Also, we put together favors that doubled as centerpieces. We saved dollars and had something nice. This woman however, took saving dollars to a whole new level. She was just stockpiling random crap, that I’m pretty sure Goodwill wouldn’t accept. This would be okay if it was what the daughter and her fiance wanted. It was not. The mother set the entire wedding budget at $1000. She sat down with the groom’s mother to discuss the wedding plans. The groom’s mother was willing to pitch in financially, but the bride’s mother wouldn’t have it. Not because of pride, or genuinely not being able to afford it. Just because she did not want to spend the money. She decided the wedding would be held in a high school. The guests would bring the food and drink. The wedding gown came from a pawn shop. That last one wouldn’t have been so bad, except the pawn shop didn’t so much deal in wedding dresses. Thus, there weren’t many, and they were hanging in the back storage. The back storage that may or may not have had a rat problem. The young woman found a tolerable dress only to find that the skirt was covered in rat pee. The mother was really excited because that meant they could get a deal. They wound up spending $75 on a rat pee soaked dress. I got a pretty nice dress to be a zombie bride at the pub crawl for $20. It was even clean. I really love my rat…but her pee is gross. It’s usually hit or miss as to whether I think her blankets (cut from fleece scraps or rags) can even be washed and re-used. If I were that poor girl, I would have been awfully paranoid that the guests could smell rat pee on me at the reception. My feeling is that it’s one thing if this woman wants to be cheap. It’s another to force it on someone else who does not want it to the point that you won’t let them do anything just so you can prove how cheap you are.
I mean, this guy after that scrounged for change around the streets of Las Vegas was a little odd. He paid his bills by signing up for research studies. He was really disappointed to find out he wouldn’t qualify for one where he would have one of his testicles removed and replaced with a prosthetic. I would be happy to find out that I wouldn’t have to undergo surgery in a very tender place, but hey, to each his own. At least he was keeping his weird dollar saving and making to himself. Well, except for the people at the laundromat that he would ask if he could throw a few pieces in with their load so he wouldn’t have to pay for washing or drying. Even they were allowed to choose whether or not to put his items in with theirs.
The couple that was expecting a baby and didn’t want to spend any money was a different story. All the furniture in the nursery was cobbled together from items found in dumpsters and alleys. The walls were painted with bits of paint from samples and oops cans (all of which were free). The real showstopper, though, was when they went to a dump and scavenged items that could be fashioned together into a breast pump. I don’t know what all the guy found, but there was a bicycle pump involved. He kept testing it on himself as he worked to see how it was coming. Uhhhh…. I can even see getting a used breast pump. However, cobbling together one out of parts that were never intended to be part of a breast pump, something that applies suction to a very sensitive region and holds food for an infant? I do not see that being a good plan. My favorite part was when she said that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend money, it was that she wanted to be choosy as to what she spent it on. Um, if you don’t want to spend it on your newborn baby, what will you spend it on? Why have the money if you never want to spend it?
There was also the guy who was a firefighter, and crazy cheap. He covered all the outlets and light switches in the house with tape to prevent the rest of the family from using any extra electricity. He flipped all the breakers at 8pm, so they couldn’t turn anything on even if they wanted to. Again, with the forcing your rules on your family. The electricity wasn’t so bad at least. He took all their dirty dishes and laundry to the firehouse to avoid paying a cent for doing them. Again, not so bad. Where things got dicey was when he would clean out the fridge at the fire house and feed the leftovers to the family. That was all they would eat was leftovers. Which gave them food poisoning more than once. Gross. The finale was their daughter’s sweet sixteen. At a strip club. He got a really good deal, because they aren’t open during the day. He assured his daughter that her friends wouldn’t even notice the poles because they would be decorated. He also presented her with his old car, which he gave a new paint job to. A flat black spray paint job that he did himself. I get that one doesn’t need to spend an insane amount on a sweet sixteen party. I get that you don’t need to get your kid a brand new car. But maybe spare the bargain shelf spray paint and strip club and throw your kid a pizza party in the backyard.
I think the really special family, however, was the last one we saw before AHS began. They had three kids, but one was grown, married, and moved on. They had electricity and a hot water heater, but refused to use either. They had a lantern to use for light. They shared cold bathwater. The tub would get filled once with cold water, and then the kids would get to use it first, then the parents. The mother would pour a smidgen of shower gel into a small container and tell the family they had to ration it through the month. One of the sons admitted that sometimes he would sneak a private shower in the middle of the night so his mom wouldn’t know. They took a broken chest freezer and buried it in a shady spot in the yard to store their food. It stayed a cool 55 degrees Fahrenheit in there, so they would only keep meat for a week. She wouldn’t buy toilet paper, so they used free newspapers. Conveniently, they used newspapers to insulate the windows, too. The woman explained that it was handy, because if the boys forgot to restock the newspapers for butt wiping, she could crack open the window to grab one. She bragged that she never saw a dentist. If she got a cavity or anything, she would chisel the tooth out herself. Sometimes, she explained, you would miss the tooth and knock yourself out, but when you awoke you could just finish removing the tooth. The home had three bedrooms, but they only used one. The other two were permanently closed off so they wouldn’t have to heat or cool or whatever them. The whole family slept in one bed and their combined body heat saved on heat. Because, you know, making your teenage son and your other son share a bed with their parents isn’t weird at all. Their grown, married daughter, her husband, and their three children were coming to visit. So, dad pitched a tent in the yard so the parents and brothers could sleep in it, and the daughter and her family would sleep in the room that the family usually used. They still refused to open either of the other two rooms. Since the mother knew that the daughter and her family wouldn’t take cold baths, they put a large washtub in the yard with a plastic liner. The daughter could heat water on the outdoor stove for her family to bathe. Dad had gone out and shot some squirrels and caught some frogs for dinner. The mother said it was okay, because the daughter agreed to stay there, so she knew what she was getting into. Which, her daughter was an adult, so yeah she could agree or not. However, the sons weren’t. They clearly weren’t on board or they wouldn’t be sneaking showers (albeit cold ones) when their mother wouldn’t know about it.
I’m not a parent…at least not to human children. Mostly because I don’t want to have to make lifestyle choices based on what’s best for someone else. I mean, if I want to eat cheese and crackers for dinner, that’s one thing. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to force a kid to eat that because I don’t want to cook. There are plenty of poor families out there who are scraping by to cobble together a family life that provides some sense of well being to their kids. To force that on kids just because you want to hoard money? It’s not like it’s useful in the afterlife.
Suddenly, American Horror Story seems a lot less scary.